Jonathan Trott Leaves Ashes Cricket Tour Due to Stress

England batsman Jonathan Trott, pictured on Nov. 23, bowed out of the Ashes cricket tour due to a stress-related illness.

England batsman Jonathan Trott has left the Ashes cricket tour due to a stress-related illness, the country’s cricket board said Monday, following England’s heavy defeat to Australia in the first Test in Brisbane.

Trott scored 10 runs in England’s first innings and nine in the second as England experienced one of its biggest defeats in Australia, losing by 381 runs. Man-of-the-match Mitchell Johnson took Trott’s wicket in both innings.

“The cricket side of things is unimportant now, all that matters is that Jonathan is given the time, support and space he needs to recover,” the cricket board’s statement quoted England Cricket’s managing director Hugh Morris as saying.

Trott is number 15 in the International Cricket Council’s latest rankings for Test batsmen. The council is the global governing body of the sport.

Trott wasn’t the only English player to struggle with Johnson’s rapid bowling. The Australian finished the match with nine wickets, and he also scored 103 runs with the bat. Johnson has often been the butt of England fans’ jokes for being inconsistent, but his performance in Brisbane silenced them.

England bowled Australia out for 295 runs in the first innings, but from then on lost control of the game in the face of Johnson’s bowling onslaught, collapsing for 136 all out in the first innings and 179 in the second.\

The International Cricket Council said Monday that Australia’s captain Michael Clarke was fined 20% of his match fee for breaching a code of conduct relating to the use of obscene or offensive language against English bowler James Anderson.

The stump microphone picked up Clarke telling Anderson to “get ready for a broken f— arm” on the final day of the Test, when Johnson was bowling full tilt.